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Invention and Craft: A Guide to College Writing offers a new approach to teaching and learning in the first-year writing classroom. Invention and Craft draws on
the relationship between the writing process and the creative process model and teaches a problem-solving, insight-driven approach to writing clearly and effectively
in all genres. Its emphasis on knowledge transfer instructs students to recognize the patterns that occur within and across genres and to apply what they know
to each new writing assignment. Invention and Craft offers special promise for casting students in the role of meaning-makers by pinpointing strategies for transferring
knowledge—the hallmark of successful expository prose.

Invention and Craft: A Guide to College Writing, First Edition by Ronda Leathers Dively — Table of Contents

Part 1: Creating Contexts for Understanding Composition

1. Composition and Creativity

Some Straight Talk about Composition Courses

The Search for Creativity in Expository Writing

Expository Writing and Other Creative Activities

Creativity and Self-Awareness

The Transfer of Composing Knowledge

— Conditions for Knowledge Transfer

— Routes for Knowledge Transfer in Composition

— Processes Involved in Knowledge Transfer

— Negative Transfer and Composing Myths

An Invitation to Create in Your Composition Course

2. Composing Processes and Creative Processes

A Composing Model

— Invention

— Drafting

— Revision

— Editing

Expository Writing as a Creative Act

The Creative Process Model

— First Insight

— Preparation

— Incubation

— Insight

— Verification

The Creative Process Model and Expository Writing

Reflection and Your Development as a Writer

3. Rhetorical Situations

Overlaps between Creative and Expository

Writing

Creativity and the Rhetorical Situation

Rhetoric and Constructive Constraints

Elements of the Rhetorical Situation

— Audience and Forum

— Topic

— Genre

— Author’s Purpose

— Author’s Role

Rhetorical Appeals

— Ethos

— Pathos

— Logos

Rhetoric and Creative Drive

4. Invention Strategies

Prewriting Techniques

— Unstructured Prewriting Techniques

— Structured Prewriting Techniques

Invention beyond the Composition Class

5. Research Strategies

Research Methods

— Primary Research

— Secondary Research

Strategies for Managing Secondary Research

Research, Invention, and Knowledge

Transfer

Part 2: Creating Texts That Inform

6. Introduction to Texts That Inform

Purposes and Strategies for Informing

Application in College and the Workplace

7. Memoir

Distinguishing Features of a Memoir

Processes for Composing a Memoir

— Invention toward First Insight

— Preparation through Research

— Invention toward More Focused Insight

— Strategies for Drafting

— Revision and Editing

Transfer to Other Writing Situations

READINGS

— “One Writer’s Beginnings,” by Eudora Welty

— “The Workers,” by Richard Rodriguez

8. Profile

Distinguishing Features of a Profile

Processes for Composing a Profile

— Invention toward First Insight

— Preparation through Research

— Invention toward More Focused Insight

— Strategies for Drafting

— Revision and Editing

Transfer to Other Writing Situations

READINGS

— “From a Dream to Reality,” by Erin Anderson, a First-Year Composition Student